Re: new help browser

["David C. Mason" <dcm redhat com>]

Jonathan Blandford <jrb@redhat.com> writes:


> Online docs can be probelmatic, especially for free software.
> Generally, there is very little to be gained to putting documentation
> online, except insignificant diskspace.  Programs like the Gimp and
> gnumeric, are the exception, rather then the rule in this regard.
> Additionally, versioning is painful.  Imagine I have foo version 1.23
> installed, and the newest version available is 1.26.  Should we display
> this document (which could be wrong, or even worse, almost correct) or
> keep versions 1.23->1.26 online somewhere?  I don't see what this buys
> us, and it'll protentially cause us and the user trouble.


I agree with you, up until one particular type of online doc... that
being the development doc. The main example of this is the Microsoft
Developer Series where a shop gets about three or four disks worth of
developer docs which are meant to reside on a server. Everyone then
points their Visual C++, or other Visual Studio app, at the docs CDs
on the server and it saves a lot of swapping CDs and disk space.

This has become the norm in most Windows shops. No we don't have that
great amount of information all in one format - all easy to read, but
it would be nice to have the help browser 'capable' of handling such a
situation so that if a big ISV came along with loads of docs, they
have the chance to reproduce this situation.

Dave

-- 

          David Mason
        Red Hat AD Labs

        dcm@redhat.com
  http://people.redhat.com/dcm